11.30.2017

Facebook has made a major bet on Los Angeles County’s San Fernando Valley. The Menlo Park-based social networking giant signed a roughly 80,000-square-foot lease at The Mix at Harman Campus in Northridge, The Real Deal has learned.

Facebook is building out a portion of the newly developed campus to fit a fledgling, specialized division of the company that could be related to creating original content, sources said.

Asking rates at the four-building campus at 8500-8550 Balboa Boulevard, which borders Napa Street, value the lease at roughly $1.7 million a year.

Other tenants include technology company Samsung’s Harman International, the parent company of speaker manufacturers JBL and Harman Kardon.

Ron Wade and Bennett Robinson of CBRE represented the landlord, but declined to comment. The tenant broker could not be confirmed. Facebook has worked with Owen Fileti of L.A. Realty Partners in the past — he represented Facebook in a new lease and expansion deal at Playa Jefferson — but he declined to comment.

Bill Shubin, a principal of the developer Shubin-Nadal, also declined to comment. Facebook did not respond to requests.

Just last year, Facebook, which has a market capitalization of $508 billion and is one of the most valuable companies in the world, signed a 35,000-square-foot lease at the Playa Jefferson campus at 12777 West Jefferson Boulevard in Playa Vista. That lease cost Facebook roughly $1.5 million a year, sources said at the time.